Trenton man sentenced to 10 years in prison for 2008 shooting death

Exterior view of the new Mercer County Criminal Courthouse in Trenton on South Warren St, in Trenton, New Jersey. Michael Mancuso/The Times

TRENTON — A city man was sentenced to 10 years in prison today for the 2008 shooting death of Marshan Washington.

Jamal B. Darby, 25, was originally charged with murder but pleaded guilty in January to the lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter.

Superior Court Judge Robert Billmeier said Darby will have to serve 85 percent of the sentence, or about eight years and six months, before he is eligible for parole. Because Darby has been in prison since his arrest in 2008, he has nearly five years in jail credits that were applied to the sentence, Billmeier said.

Darby did not make any statement at the sentencing hearing. He blew a kiss to two of his family members who attended the proceeding before being led out of the courtroom in shackles by sheriff’s officers.

Darby was charged along with Wallace L. McClain for the shooting that occurred on Feb. 24, 2008.

Assistant Prosecutor Skylar Weissman said authorities originally believed that Darby pulled the trigger, killing Washington, but now believe that McClain was the shooter.
In his guilty plea Darby said he showed McClain where the gun was in the house on the night that Washington was shot and killed.

Darby said he and Washington had an argument the day before the shooting. When he returned to the house on the 200 block of West Hanover Street in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, he found Washington and McClain there, he said.

Darby said McClain was acting strange and violent, and when he showed him the gun, which was hidden in a couch, he used it to shoot and kill Washington.

McClain pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in 2010 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

City sanitation workers found Washington’s body wrapped in a blue tarp, with one arm sticking out, at a bend in the road where Riverside Drive becomes Clearfield Avenue.